Hello all, I had 7 keywords ranked in the top 20, so I decided to concentrate on 3 of them and used them as anchor text in my articles. Since then, the keywords that I concentrated on have fallen to inbetween 60 and 80 and the other keywords have stayed higher. How does this make sense? I am really dissappointed. Barb
Sorry to hear that your frustrated but this is not out of the norm unfortunately. One of the more important aspects of SEO link building is the variability of your anchor texts. That means that you need to change your anchor texts every once in a while. So for example if you were to go out and build lots of link ALL for the exact same keyword (as you have done) you aren't benefiting your SERP (search engine results page) or your rankings, in fact you are actually doing the opposite as you have found out because you are, in essence, triggering a red flag from Google. The reason for this is Google hates paid links, so if they blatantly see that you are buying lots and lots of links (with the same anchor texts) they will more likely penalize you then give you more PR or better SERP's. You should also consider other link building strategies besides just article posting and article syndication. There are plenty of threads in the "Link Development" section to help you out on this one.. Hope this helps!
Paul, Thanks very much for your answer. I did not know that at all. I will vary my anchor text now. I do use other methods of link building, but concentrating on articles more.
Hi Barb, Would you mind sharing more specifics? Exactly how many articles did you create to promote each keyword? How new is your website? It is common to start out with strong rankings and then fall back for a bit. I wouldn't necessarily blame this on your article submissions. Matt
Anchor text can be used on a website to direct traffic from one page to another and can spread link juice around your website. However, to use anchor text links for high search ranking they need to be backlinks from other sites like this forum. Then they can be beneficial.